13 December 2019

Can you be someone's Secret Santa this giving season?

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DVCS

Can you help DVCS provide for their clients impacted by domestic violence, this Christmas? Photo: Supplied.

Each year the Domestic Violence Crisis Service (DVCS) supports thousands of clients: children, young people and adults who are impacted by domestic and family violence.

Clients receive all sorts of different support, such as crisis intervention over the phone, safety planning in person, support at court, support groups, access to security upgrades and even support to manage their own use of violence as part of DVCS’s exclusive Room4Change program.

Additionally, from time to time, DVCS places clients into hotels. We do this when there is an imminent risk to a person’s safety. This could be an individual person, or they might have children. They might be in the hotel for one night, or it could be for longer than a fortnight.

Secret Santa

Secret Santa Appeal

Regardless of how big the family, or how long their stay, DVCS takes steps to provide them with all the necessities, often extending to the comforts of home they have left behind. This includes clean and comfortable accommodation, with cooking and laundry facilities for those longer stays. DVCS also provides emergency breakfast and dinner packs, vouchers at nearby grocery stores, vouchers for petrol or phone credit and sometimes even a mobile phone, activity packs and snuggle blankets for children and the ever-important toiletries pack.

DVCS relies heavily on the support of our local community to fund the toiletry packs. In fact, this Christmas, we encourage you to ditch the office Secret Santa presents and instead purchase items from the DVCS Secret Santa list and donate to DVCS instead.

Items they need include new and unused, individually wrapped:

  • Travel-sized shampoo and conditioner
  • Travel-sized body wash or individually wrapped soap
  • Roll-on deodorant (gender-neutral, plastic bottles preferred)
  • Travel-sized moisturiser
  • Individually packaged toothbrushes
  • Travel-sized toothpaste
  • Individually packaged pads and tampons
  • Pocket tissues, band-aids, hairbands and lip balm.

The items they really need are travel-sized shampoo and conditioner and travel-sized moisturiser – those seem to be the least donated items.

Donations can be dropped to any Beyond Bank branch in Canberra or Queanbeyan from now until Christmas Eve – please check the opening times for your local branch.

After Christmas, a dedicated team of volunteers will sort all the donations to ensure everything is unused and safe, before packaging them into nice neat little toiletry packs to be distributed by DVCS staff over the coming two years.

But if you can’t get to a Beyond Bank branch before Christmas Eve and you still want to make a difference, you absolutely can!

Jump onto DVCS’s website and purchase vouchers for groceries, petrol, phone credit, entertainment, security upgrades or just make a general contribution. All of these vouchers will be gifted to clients in the coming year. All purchases are considered a donation, so will receive a tax-deductible receipt.

Domestic and family violence is a community issue and must be resolved by a community response. With that in mind, we sincerely thank our community for their never-ending support.

Happy Christmas, Canberra!

DVCS is a non-government organisation providing 24/7 crisis intervention, safety planning, access to emergency accommodation and security upgrades, legal advocacy, support groups, support to children and women and their families, support to men to address their use of violence.

DVCS will remain operational throughout the entire Christmas and New Year period and can be contacted on 02 6280 0900 or at www.dvcs.org.au.

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